In 2004, comic book writer Geoff Johns almost single-handedly saved the Green Lantern comic which was at that point languishing in second tier obscurity, constantly being overshadowed by the DC big three, Superman, Batman & Wonder Woman. Through the years, his expert writing introduced many memorable story arcs and new characters that propelled the whole Green Lantern character and mythos to epic levels.
One of my favorite concepts brought in by Johns was the creation of the “other” colored lanterns or what many like to call the rest of the rainbow corps. It really is seems like an obvious and almost campy move that surprisingly no other Green Lantern writer prior to Johns ever thought of. For years, Green Lantern already had his nemesis, a villain called Sinestro, who sported a similar construct creating ring but was colored yellow. He also had another on & off enemy named Star Saphire, who although didn’t have a ring, shot out violet colored lasers from a specially powered crystal.
So…You already have green, yellow & violet, why NOT have the rest of the color spectrum? This is exactly what Johns asked and he answered his own question by introducing the red, blue, orange & indigo lanterns to complete the rainbow. Now the reason why he managed to accomplish all this while avoiding any eye rolls and ridicule was that he gave a proper explanation for the existence of each color which made perfect sense. And at the same time, he made sure each color wasn’t just a rehash of another color, aside from the basics of a protective shield and flight, each color had different characteristics and power sets that made them unique.
So for a quick explanation, we have 7 colors in the spectrum and each color represented or was powered by a specific emotion. It was already established in the past that the color green represented willpower and the color yelow was fear. Of the 7 colors green, as willpower was positioned at the center of the spectrum, to the left of green were the “negative emotions”, red for rage was at the far left as the extreme negative, orange for avarice (or greed) was next, and finally yellow for fear. To the right of green were the “positive” emotions, blue for hope, indigo for compassion, and on the far right, violet for love.
So what does all this mean to a toy collector like me? Why more toys to collect of course. Now while I really did get into the whole Green Lantern comic…I did not want to go out a start up a full blown green lantern collection. For me a nice group of lanterns with each color properly represented was good enough. So this is what I set out to do....
to be continued...